THE DUNGEON MASTER SCREENING

Monday, March 15, 2010

So Cool

The Strong Brothers were geeks back in the teenage days.

Not nerds. There's a difference there for those of you who don't know....

Nerds know about important shit like how to change the world and make it better. They’ve taken the time and brain power to dedicate their skills to the world's problems and fix them, to find solutions. A Nerd is a politician, scientist and world changer.

But a Geek?

Well, a Geek can tell you how much damage a level 4 Magic User could deal if he cast a Fireball Spell at range 20 towards a horde of Hobgoblins...

It’s 4D6, assuming the Hobgoblins don’t make a Reflex Save. Of course.

Oh lord.

I looked that up, just so you know.

But, yeah, we played Dungeons and Dragons back in the day.

I was a Cleric named Whiploh (creative, I know) who had a war hammer of destruction - Rider was a Thief named Javock who could melt into the shadows and become invisible. We kicked ass. As much as a pair of brothers who played D and D could I guess...

But, as happens...we moved on.

We discovered much cooler things to embrace, like playing “grown up games” poker, jobs...relationships.

But about a year ago found that D&D was brought back into our lives and we tried to play again, to rekindle the imagination and adventure that we experienced when we were 10. Should be a blast.

We gathered some other closeted Geek friends and had a night of playing D&D, this time with real beer instead of the root kind.

Because none of us could remember how to play, we invited a “friend of a friend,” who was a serious Gamer, to come over and to teach us the rules as well as be a part of our group.

Now, this “friend of a friend,” who shall remain nameless, was a really nice guy, and he REALLY got into it. I mean he had different voices for his character and was genuinely upset when his Elf girlfriend got killed, or maybe it was his sister....not sure.

But regardless - I mean, he would REALLY ROLE PLAY his character. He was INTO IT.

And...

It made us a little uncomfortable...

We just couldn’t do it.

We wanted to make fun of him. I mean, we didn’t, not to his face at least...

So, after a painful night of trying to play, Rider and I sat around after everyone had left and tried to discover what the reason was that we couldn’t get into it like back in our youngster years.

And why we wanted to poke fun at this “friend of a friend” gamer who was just trying to have a good time, doing it, making a fool of himself but having a better time then all of us!

We came to the conclusion: it was because we were too cool.

Now, I need to stop you there - I don’t mean that we ARE too cool. I mean to say that we THOUGHT we were too cool. See we were not able to let ourselves go and embrace that Geek mentality to say with a straight face in front of our friends: “I am Olsigan The Powerful, if you dare not let our party brave adventurers pass you shall feel the wrath of my Warhammer!”

Yeah....we couldn’t let go that much. We thought we were too cool. Really we were too insecure. Afraid that people would make fun of us.

Like we were making fun of this “friend of a friend.”

Assholes.

See, he showed up and played his heart out, and I respect him for it - even though I want to make fun of him...

So we decided to make a short film about it!

This blog is the story of the making of that short film and all other things Strong Brother related.

This short - Working title: “The Dungeon Master.” Or maybe, “Maximus, The Dungeon Master.”